They are great novel readers, but the market is chiefly furnished by England.  They have, however, a few very good native novels.  Mr. Flint’s Francis Berrian is delightful.  There is a vigor and freshness in his writing that is exactly in accordance with what one looks for, in the literature of a new country; and yet, strange to say, it is exactly what is most wanting in that of America.  It appeared to me that the style of their imaginative compositions was almost always affected, and inflated.  Even in treating their great national subject of romance, the Indians, they are seldom either powerful or original.  A few well known general features, moral and physical, are presented over and over again in all their Indian stories, till in reading them you lose all sense of individual character.  Mr. Flint’s History of the Mississippi Valley is a work of great interest, and information, and will, I hope, in time find its way to England, where I think it is much more likely to be appreciated than in America.

Dr. Channing is a writer too well known in England to require my testimony to his great ability.  As a preacher he has, perhaps, hardly a rival any where.  This gentleman is an Unitarian, and I was informed by several persons well acquainted with the literary character of the country, that nearly all their distinguished men were of this persuasion.

Mr. Pierpoint is a very eloquent preacher, and a sweet poet.  His works are not so well known among us as .they ought to be.  Mr. Everett has written some beautiful lines, and if I may judge from the specimens of his speeches, as preserved in the volumes intitled “Eloquence of the United States,” I should say that he shone more as a poet than an orator.  But American fame has decided otherwise.

Mr. M. Flint, of Louisiana, has published a volume of poems which ought to be naturalised here.  Mr. Hallock, of New York, has much facility of versification, and is greatly in fashion as a drawing-room poet, but I think he has somewhat too much respect for himself, and too little for his readers.

It is, I think, Mr. Bryant who ranks highest as the poet of the Union.  This is too lofty an eminence for me to attack; besides, “I am of another parish,” and therefore, perhaps, no very fair judge.

From miscellaneous poetry I made a great many extracts, but upon returning to them for transcription I thought that ill-nature and dulness, (’oh ill-matched pair!’) would be more served by their insertion, than wholesome criticism.

The massive Fredoniad of Dr. Emmons, in forty cantos, I never read; but as I did not meet a single native who had, I hope this want of poetical enterprise will be excused.

They have very few native tragedies; not more than half a dozen I believe, and those of very recent date.  It would be ungenerous to fall heavily upon these; the attempt alone, nearly the most arduous a poet can make, is of itself honourable:  and the success at least equal to that in any other department of literature.